En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is re­ject­ing Venezuela’s claims that T&T was com­plic­it in the seizure of an oil ves­sel trans­port­ing Venezuela’s oil last week and he is ask­ing its gov­ern­ment to di­rect all their com­plaints to the US gov­ern­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s ac­cu­sa­tion that this coun­try col­lud­ed with the US in the seizure of its oil tanker as “false pro­pa­gan­da.”

Af­ter eight months in of­fice, Ju­nior Min­is­ters Phillip Alexan­der, Clyde El­der and Ernesto Ke­sar say their work across Hous­ing, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and En­er­gy has been de­fined by in­tense prepa­ra­tion, prob­lem-solv­ing and a fo­cus on de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments to cit­i­zens’ lives.

Op­po­si­tion chief whip and for­mer min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the trag­ic deaths of for­mer D’Abadie/O’Meara PNM MP (now Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca) Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren, in­sist­ing that there is noth­ing in the re­port that would com­pro­mise the in­ter­ests of the fam­i­ly or the wider pub­lic.

May­or of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled Ari­ma Cor­po­ra­tion, Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj, says he has done noth­ing wrong in at­tend­ing last Sat­ur­day’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fundrais­er func­tion—and he’s look­ing for­ward to his re­tire­ment from busi­ness and spend­ing time with his grand­chil­dren.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion have vowed not to let Sun­day’s shoot­ing along Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Wood­brook off­set the 66 per cent de­cline in homi­cides they have man­aged to record be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 to present.

There has been a no­tice­able slow­down in the num­ber of shop­pers and ac­tiv­i­ty in shop­ping ar­eas across down­town Port-of-Spain, ac­cord­ing to ven­dors and busi­nes­sown­ers in the cap­i­tal city.

Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) pres­i­dent Shawn Roberts is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ex­pe­dite wage dis­cus­sions with the union, as he says there is an ur­gent need to re­view the salaries of em­ploy­ees.

Health Min­is­ter Lack­ram Bo­doe is avoid­ing di­rect an­swers on whether some re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers, now protest­ing their ex­clu­sion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) ten per cent wage in­crease deal, will re­ceive back­pay be­fore Christ­mas.

A man has been sen­tenced to a lit­tle over three years in prison af­ter ad­mit­ting to sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing a woman dur­ing a home in­va­sion in 2017.

A for­mer em­ploy­ee of ANSA Bank at the cen­tre of a $30 mil­lion fraud­u­lent loan con­spir­a­cy, which in­volves a group of for­eign used car deal­ers, has been or­dered to re­pay more than half the mon­ey the bank was de­fraud­ed of.

A wide cross sec­tion of cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) per­son­al­i­ties and top mem­bers of oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties, are ex­pect­ed to at­tend this af­ter­noon’s fu­ner­al of PNM and ONR foun­da­tion mem­ber Fer­di­nand “Fer­die” Fer­reira.